Afghanistan

So this is how the cookie crumbles. The United States says that the much debated ‘security pact’ with Afghanistan is in the interest of the Afghan people and essential for its security after the US withdrawal. It has been increasingly…

It was shortly after five on a Saturday morning last April. The prisoners in the communal cellblock at Camp 6 in Guantanamo Bay Prison had just gathered for morning prayers. Suddenly the overhead lights went out, the cell doors slammed shut…

The next thirteen months will be critical for Afghanistan and its neighbours, as for future regional stability. How well prepared is the country and various international stakeholders in Afghanistan to navigate the three key transitions…

Words matter. Is it the ‘war in Afghanistan’ or the ‘war on Afghanistan’? The answer depends on which side of the fence one is on, but the statement points to something deeper: about the nature of war itself. In a classical sense, war means…

THE heated speculation and feverish commentary over who would become Pakistan`s next army chief after Gen Kayani`s retirement would not have been out of place in a closely fought election.
This keen, almost unhealthy, interest reDects…

I must refer to Sheikh Rashid’s rather blunt enunciation of his philosophy of politics: ‘line and length’, and ‘timing’. Make whatever you can of it, and I don’t know if he has himself always observed the essence of these two rather…

Before the drone turned into an assassin, it was a spy in the sky. But no more. It has now acquired the status of a ruthless killer that the US employs on the hostile soil of Muslim countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen. It’s said…

Sectarian violence in the country is no longer a one-dimensional, local phenomenon of intense expression of hatred of one sect towards the other, as it was at the time of its inception in the mid-1980s. It has rather become a part of larger…

DESPITE Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s assurances to President Hamid Karzai on the subject during his recent visit to Kabul, much mystery still surrounds the release of Mullah Baradar.
However, the latter development as well as the recent…